Fruit in my dessert

Too much and not enough

Moments of madness strip me of the fantasy that I am meant to do this, even in the short term. Moments of yelling, screaming, and fully “losing it,” shout at me that I do not want this to be my full time job. I am angry that maybe for the first time I’ve found a job that I can’t do well. This is not to say that I don’t think that I’m the best mother that ever lived. I know what my kids need and want in a way no one else can or will. I will forever be – or hope to be - their primary place of comfort, acceptance, love, and understanding. At least until they are able, hopefully, to find a partner like I did to take on that role for them (because of course I have set them up well to do so). I know I don’t have this level of control over their lives, but I’m still working on actually acting like I believe that. I think I needed them to be my only purpose for a bit. I thought that bit would last longer. But I don’t think they can be my only purpose any longer. They are three and almost one and I’m ready to figure out who I am again – without them. It’s time - for them and for me – to figure out what’s next. Maybe some of that will be writing about them and my experience as their mother, in the least exploitative way possible, so I can make sense of my experience, and hopefully help others with similar experiences along the way. A happy mom makes a happy family. It has always sounded so trite to me (so many mommy sayings do). I now say that because I know it, not because I pretend to think it’s true. I love them more than life. But they’re not going to know that enough if I’m with them all of the time – and seem frustrated or thwarted or downright angry. And neither am I. I love myself too. And this is one of the ways I can make sure I – and they – know it. [Gulp] [Jump]

Dear Diary

I started this blog with the hope that I would put very little filter on what I write, even though I know people will read it - most who know me - and maybe judge, or worry, or ask questions, or think things about me that make me uncomfortable. It's worked out well so far but sometimes I think of great things to write about that I don't write because it's not anonymous and I don't want anyone to judge, worry, ask questions, or think things about me that make me uncomfortable. I know I care too much what other people think, and I'm working on that, and a lot of other stuff too, but it is what it is.

So, I really want to write that I'm confused about our impending move to New York. I'm thankful to several amazingly patient and wonderful friends for talking me through a lot of it with me because they know who I am and what my issues are and how I need to talk through almost every decision I make, even when the decision has already been made...and they love me anyway. And let it be all about me, when really it shouldn't be as much about me as it sometimes feels like it is.

Everyone thinks this decision has already been made, everyone except me. We've made an offer, it's been accepted, we're just waiting on the contracts to sign. We've put our place on the market, it's received an offer, I think we're in the middle of negotiations. We've told everyone we're moving. The only thing that's uncertain is my brain. My heart. I hate uncertainty. I'm still waiting for my Gut to tell me what to do. But it won't say anything, or maybe it is talking, but it's being muffled, strangled even, by anxieties like Mr. Prepared For Financial Ruin, Ms. Your Kid Needs a Yard, Mrs. You'll Never Find Friends Like These Again, and my personal favorite, Mr. If You Change Your Mind Later You're A Failure.

Please, I know these are all anxieties that can be rationalized away, and in all likelihood you have already had a conversation with me to tell me it's going to be okay, and better than that, that it's going to be great. You've reminded me that New York is the dream I've always had for myself and my family...that New York is WHO I AM. You've told me that you'll miss me, but really, I should go.

Why then, doesn't it just feel RIGHT?

Or is it like one of you confirmed for me yesterday, that I'm going through the stages of grief? Shock and Denial have recently passed, making room for stages 2 (Pain/Guilt), 3 (Anger/Bargaining), and 4(Depression/Reflection/Loneliness) all at once. Can you imagine how tortuous this is for B - who just woke up one day and decided this would be a good idea and hasn't looked back? I know some of you can imagine, because you know just how tortuous I can be. Sorry, B.

So, here's the question: Does it make sense to be going through the stages of grief for something I really want to do?

And, here's the second question: Will one of you just call B tomorrow and pretend to be some big fancy firm that's going to pay him a ridiculous amount and allow him to have all of the creative freedom in the world with one contingency...that he move to New York? I'd be much better at getting behind this decision if it wasn't up to me to make it.

If I weren't worried that you would judge, worry, ask questions, or think things about me that make me feel uncomfortable, that's what I would write.

Dreamer

I don't consider myself a dreamer. I was at dinner tonight with a friend who considers herself a dreamer. And I would say that in the short time I've known her I agree with that assessment. I think of my husband as somewhat of a dreamer too. I have dreams, nightmares actually, but if we were playing some kind of word association game, I would call myself a planner much more easily than a dreamer.

But, the thing is, I am a dreamer. It's just that I NEED my dreams to come true so I don't allow myself to take the dreams too far without a PLAN. I can't stand disappointment and am easily disappointed, so if I'm going to allow myself to dream, I have to make plans to make the dream come true. This could explain some of the anxiety that leads to the aforementioned nightmares.

Anyways, I'm also a horoscope believer, and lately I've found them to be extra deep and somewhat perplexing, as if the universe has a plan for me and it's my job to sit and wait for it (I think the horoscope people have been talking to Oprah). Here is today's (courtesy of tarot.com via igoogle.com):

Your confusion may reach new heights today before beginning to finally dissipate. Of course, others might not think this is so productive, yet you are smiling because your visionary dreams and soft intuition can show you a healthy way through this extraordinary time. But avoiding the intensity is not a great idea; it's more important that you embrace the changes now, as they can teach you a lot about your true character.

It appears that I'm not only a dreamer, but a visionary too. Oh, the pressure. What should I be intuiting? Which changes should I be embracing? What are they going to teach me about my character? How can I plan for this change? What should I be envisioning and dreaming about? Avoid intensity? I thought you knew me. Here comes the anxiety. Within the hour I will be having a dream where I will be in some kind of hotel-like building where I cannot find the stairs or use the elevator to get to the room I need to get to. People will tell me things like, "oh, you can't get there from here," as if I'm crazy, and there is a chance that there will be a logistical challenge of some kind with HD (in the dream only, I hope) as well. Ah, to be a dreamer.

ENFJ or ISFP

B sent me a link today to this cool site that does a Myers-Briggs evaluation of your blog. Here's what the Typealizer has to say about Fruit In My Dessert. I'm an artist!

I was shocked at first to find out that my ENFJ (Extroversion, iNtuition, Feeling, Judging) self writes a blog that is ISFP (Introversion, Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving). I have not done a complete analysis or review of what this really means, but I'm a big believer in this stuff and can make a quick assessment.

I do not write completely freely on my blog because I don't want to offend, irritate, or upset friends or family or others. In real life (as my closest loved ones and colleagues might mention) I have very little problem telling you exactly how I feel and how you are a part of that for better or worse. I also do a lot more fact-based and article-based talking on my blog, whereas in real life, I just tell you what I think about a topic or issue with no need to back it up with any real data, unless you make me. My blog world is more concrete than my real world has ever been, which would make my high school Physics teacher and soccer coach proud.

It appears the only element missing from my equation on both fronts is the big T - Thinking. Lucky (or not) for me, that doesn't actually mean I don't think. Instead:

Those who prefer thinking tend to decide things from a more detached standpoint, measuring the decision by what seems reasonable, logical, causal, consistent and matching a given set of rules. Those who prefer feeling tend to come to decisions by associating or empathizing with the situation,looking at it 'from the inside' and weighing the situation to achieve, on balance, the greatest harmony, consensus and fit, considering the needs of the people involved.

As noted already, people who prefer thinking do not necessarily, in the everyday sense, 'think     better' than their feeling counterparts; the opposite preference is considered an equally rational way of coming to decisions (and, in any case, the MBTI assessment is a measure of preference, not ability). Similarly, those who prefer feeling do not necessarily have 'better' emotional reactions than their thinking counterparts. (source: Wikipedia)

In other words, Kumbaya, dammit!

focus

I have a list of blog posts that i want to write. I usually come up with them laying in bed at night and roll over to write them down on BH's Michigan post-it pad that has mysteriously ended up on my nightstand. I write things like:

• I read InStyle but I don't live/dress InStyle
• Cookies
• Chief performance officer

and more detailed ones too, like:

• Raising baby simultaneously euphoric and wondering what to do next
• Logistics of doing things when you think of them
• Were these obsessions (e.g. parabens) invented for SAHMs or people with too much time to focus on the wrong things - busy, doing what? Not what I want. Analogous to kids with after school activities doing better than kids without? More to manage, focus on the important stuff.

That last one is my problem. I'm not focusing on the important stuff. I have so much I want to write about, so much I want to do, but the days go by and somehow I manage not to do the things I want to get done, not to make the most of EVERY possible moment, and of course, not to let it go. Then the night comes, and I log on to check and maybe even respond to email, and I get lost in the tangled Web that others have weaved to trap me here. I read and sob about the death of someone else's child because I am so afraid that it could happen to my child. I read friends' blogs and "friends'" blogs, and strangers' blogs, and twitter, and facebook.

I help other people think about their passions, their projects. I get inspired. And then I get blurry. I can't think of what to write, what to do, what is actually the important stuff. 

And then I climb into bed and read books like Unconditional Parenting or Be Perfect Without Being Happy Happy Without Being Perfect and fiction alongside them for good balance. I stay up too late, which makes getting up energized and motivated more difficult.

Part of the reason I became a stay-at-home-mom (a term I am still not happy with), aside from wanting to spend exorbitant amounts of time with my son, was to give myself some time and space to try new things, things I've always wanted to try, for fun and for serious. And, in the last 15 months, I've dabbled, but not jumped in all the way to anything, and I'm getting impatient. I'm ready for all of that passion I have bottled up inside me to be put to good use (I think my husband is too - wink, wink). Use, use, what is the good use!?!?!?

I think this is what some people may call a rut. But I don't want to say that I'm in a rut because that says something about me. And I don't think I like what it says. I am happy, d***it, most of the time. I just feel very unFOCUSED of late. And, I've been talking a lot to other stay at home moms (it's what I do) and they feel this way a lot too. We're focusing on the wrong things, obsessing about decisions and parabens and schedules and all sorts of things that I wish I wasn't. It's time to DO something that MEANS something to ME. But how? But when? I really think I just need to start doing and the "thing" that I'm supposed to do will come. I don't think I can take it as far as a vision board, but maybe I will.

WWOD? (What Would Oprah* Do?) I think we both know she wouldn't be wasting her time writing a blog post about it, would she? In fact, if Oprah weren't Oprah, would she even watch Oprah? Man, I've got a lot of work to do.

*I do realize that including Oprah in my post may make some of you think less of me, and worse, less of the post. Sometimes, including Oprah in my thoughts makes me think less of me too. But I can't help it. It is what it is. In the future, I'll try to warn you if she's going to be in the post, so as not to jerk you out of your reading pleasure or thoughts.

Atom Bomb

The other night, I was on the phone with my dad and he told me that he took a picture of an item in a store to help him with a work project. He makes prototypes for a living so he often sees things when he's shopping that are shaped or that move in a way that could be useful to his work. He'd never taken a picture with his cell phone before. I'm actually surprised he even had his cell phone with him. Like many dads of people my age, he rarely has it on him and has it mostly for emergencies. 

We spent quite a while on the phone with me helping him figure out, step by step, how to send the picture to his email, so he could see it in a larger size and potentially print it out. We worked hard together, me working as the customer service agent that you wish you had, him playing the role of very well behaved customer who was completely compliant, including going out to the mailbox in the freezing cold because his cell service isn't very good in his house. He kept saying to me, "you really enjoy this, eh?" I think meaning that he couldn't imagine being on my side of the conversation, explaining, Googling, describing, anticipating, guessing what his phone options might be, and trying new things to help him.

When we got to the part where he had to type in his email address in to the phone, he laughed. He couldn't believe that he had to type letters in using numbers and moreso, I think he couldn't believe that people do this every day and use it as a primary way to communicate. As he went along, he got faster and started not to need my help anymore. I was excited for him, and oddly, perhaps, proud. As he completed the typing and hit send, he said, "I feel like I just invented the atom bomb," and he almost meant it.

I don't know what I want to do when I grow up, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately, but I do know that THAT is how I want to make people feel.

[End note: It turns out that text messaging and photo sending were blocked on my dad's phone. Newly empowered, he stopped at a Verizon kiosk the next day and had them take the block off for him. I got a text later that day from him: "I've like entered the 21st century! Dad" Don't you wish he was your dad?]

Dirty laundry

I became a mom today in yet another way. I'm thinking about, talking about, and now writing about the process of doing laundry. I swore I wouldn't do this but here I am.

It has come to my attention in the past few weeks that it is very possible to ABDL (always be doing laundry) and it makes me sad and anxious. We don't actually have that much laundry as a family of three. The problem is my process: I do the laundry on day one, fold it on day two or three, and put it away on day four or five. As someone who was once paid for her efficiency expertise, I am embarrassed and ashamed and have started daydreaming about outsourcing the whole thing. For now, I'll try to get the next few loads done in 24 hours or less, even if I need to pull an all nighter. This is not the kind of laundry I ever thought I'd be writing about. Calgon, take me away.

Talking too much

I've been talking too much lately. It's a frequent problem for me, as many of my friends and family members know. The reason I know I'm talking too much these days is because when I actually have the time to sit down and write, I can't think of anything to say. And that is...very, very rare. So, instead here are two lists of things that I can't think enough about at the moment to write more than one line.

Current (unnecessary) obsessions and anxieties:

1. HD's food variety. Just like his mommy and daddy, he's not getting enough vegetables. And, have I caused nutrient deficiencies by not mixing his cereal with formula or breast milk?
2. My part-time work schedule. Is it enough? Too much? Not enough writing time? Will I ever be able to focus again? Was I ever able to focus before? Who do I want to be today? What about tomorrow?
3. HD's sleeping. Or not sleeping. Runny noses, cough. No fever.
4. Frying pans with nicks in them releasing deadly Teflon into my family on the rare occasion that I do cook. Exciting news on this front: I bought a new pan and BH's SM got us one too!
5. Overwhelming amounts of stuff to put in scrapbooks, baby books, etc. Should I just throw it out? I can't.
6. Baby book blanks accompanied by memory blanks.
7. Not writing enough!
8. Packing for our trip.
9. Ruining my new bathing suit by washing it with HD's bibs...Velcro attack.
10. My back. It hurts.

Lovely things of late:

1. See part 2 of #4 above.
2. See #8 above.
3. Daily walks for exercise. Often with a wonderful mommy friend.
4. Starbucks. (okay, not new but always makes me happy)
5. BH home for several days in row.
6. HD LOVING LONG naps in his stroller.
7. Music class - seriously, it's fun.
8. HD grabbing and eating fistfuls of food.
9. HD tilting his head to the side and smiling.
10. New clothes that fit.
11. Getting granola bars in the mail from my sister because my store can't keep them in stock.
12. Let's Dish!
13. Swings and playgrounds.

I hate that I love my SUV

One of the best and worst things my husband brought to our relationship was his 1999 GMC Yukon. It's enormous inside and out. I teased him from the very beginning about driving a gas guzzler while working for a man with the initials AG. Although I briefly drove a mini-van, I mostly grew up with foreign cars with manual gear shifts and our family of four pulled our pop-up camper with a VW Scirocco. However, like other things in life, once you have a big car, it's hard to go back. Much to my dismay, I have grown to love the car/truck over the last several years. It is high up, very easy to maneuver, has no blind spots, fits lots of things, like a couch when you're moving (with all doors shut), boxes of files when you leave your job, a regulation size American flag and stand that may have once stood in the White House, party or community service supplies when your nonprofit can't afford renting a truck, and currently, as much baby gear as we want at the same time as the baby. We have filled the Yukon to the brim on many occasions. It is also a very smooth ride. But I just can't stop making excuses about it. Maybe it's because I always aim to be greener than I am, or because I live in a city full of Priuses, or because I just simply feel horrendous guilt about contributing more than my fair share to global warming,but I think about it ALL the time.

My new rationale for not getting rid of it and buying something more energy efficient, is that, unless we destroy our car, we'll still be adding to the overall carbon footprint. So, someone, PLEASE make a big, fat, beautiful SUV that gets better mileage than a Prius or doesn't need gas at all. Make lots of them so when our Yukon does go to truck heaven (100K miles and counting). Rid me of (almost) the only guilt that continuously eats at me and makes me fear we'll be kicked out of our local Energy Smackdown competition.

Just for the record, I do carry my reusable shopping bags in the back of the truck at all times.

Maybe I am passive aggressive after all

I pride myself on being direct with people. This pride is reinforced when I take personality tests in which I "discover" my work style so that I can work effectively with people who operate like me and people who don't. People tell me I'm direct and that they come to me for direct feedback. I think I pride myself so much on being direct because I equate it with being honest, trustworthy, and loyal, attributes that I want all of my friends and family to have. But every once in a while I catch myself doing something that is questionable.

Today, I was walking along the sidewalk toward Starbucks, pushing my sleeping baby in his stroller, and talking on my new hands-free Bluetooth, purchased so I can walk/drive and talk if and when the mood strikes me or a "need" to be on the phone arises at a moment's notice. Two young men stood a couple of yards away from the Starbucks on the sidewalk, asking passersby if they had a moment to talk about the environment. I'm not sure if they were looking for donations or petitions to be signed, but when one of them asked me if I had a moment, I motioned to him that I was on the phone. I finished my call as I entered Starbucks and took the Bluetooth out of my ear. After I got my beverage I thought for a moment and decided to put my Bluetooth back in and this time pretended to be on the phone as I exited so they wouldn't stop me in the opposite direction.  As I did it, I thought it was weak, dishonest, and kind of silly. I have told people on the street many times before that I don't have time to stop or have just continued on my way. Why did I choose the Bluetooth option instead? Did I just not want to be bothered? Did I feel guilty for not stopping because I was in fact not really in a rush to get where I was going? Did this make me a liar? And why do this in a situation with little or no consequence? Did I think these people would be more or less offended, hurt, or angry at me if I didn't stop and I wasn't on the phone? I must admit I did get a bit of pleasure out of the whole experience, which I think is even more bizarre than the act of "faking it" in the first place. I wonder if I'll do it again next time.